ISLAMABAD, May 17: Pakistan dismissed on Tuesday as inadequate an apology and retraction by the Newsweek magazine of a report that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Holy Quran. The report in the magazine’s May 9 issue sparked protests across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan, where 16 people were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Gaza.
“The apology and retraction are not enough,” Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Reuters. “They should understand the sentiments of Muslims and think 101 times before publishing news which hurt feelings of Muslims.”
The magazine retracted the story on Monday. Newsweek said in its May 23 edition that the information had come from a “knowledgeable government source” who had said a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay had found interrogators had flushed at least one copy of the Holy Quran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.
But the source later told the magazine he could not be certain he had seen an account of the Holy Quran incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts, Newsweek said. The Newsweek retraction came as the US strongly criticized the report and said it had damaged Washington’s image abroad.
